"Along with marriage and childbirth, I now add this as a defining moment in my life." --BH

A Best Friend

By Judy Hartline-Elbring

People generally accept the word relationship to mean a romantic one. A romantic relationship is one kind of relationship. We have many relationships, including a relationship with ourselves. Can we have a better relationship with another person than we have with ourselves?

Here is a one-minute test of your relationship with yourself. Go now and stand before a mirror. Look yourself in the eye for one minute. Listen to what you are saying about yourself. Would you want your best friend to say this about you? Your best friend just did.

How do most of us see ourselves? We began building our self image when we were little children. We noticed how people treated us and we absorbed what people said about us. We did not have the experience to distinguish between other people's problems and being "the problem." Whether or not people meant us harm, many of us were hurt by what happened to us in childhood.

We will continue to feel that hurt until we change that childhood self-image. As adults, we can come to understand, accept and love ourselves, exactly as we are. We need only the love and support of people who care about us to assist us in re-discovering who that child grew up to be. We truly need to become our own best friend.